Size Matters series, Leasowes Park and a few other caches

The view at the start of the walk - the caches take you through the woods on the hill to the left

On Sunday Isaac was available, the sun was shining and it looked a perfect day for caching. We’d planned a nice walk round the Size Matters series near Kidderminster. The Size Matters refers to the fact none of the caches in the series has it’s size stated so it’s up to you if you look for them without knowing the size of the container, or you can take a peek at the hint as it does tell you there.

A three-way junction, but what stops the pylon being pulled down in our direction?

After we’d done these I planned a trip back to Leasowes Park in Halesowen – a lovely hidden gem of a place with quite a bit of terrain and lots of hidden areas and ponds. And now, lots of caches to find too – perfect!

Luckily this guy was behind a very strong fence. I'd not want those horns anywhere near me!

We were soon parking up on the Size Matters series and started off the walk, taking the caches in the order they were intended for a change (we normally seem to do things backwards for some reason). The walk was really lovely and all the caches were nice easy finds. The only problem we had was with #10 which was hidden in a ton of ivy. We had a reasonable look but got bored in the end and moved on to the next cache.

They must have tall dogs around these parts as Isaac could walk through the gate!

After we’d finished the series we headed off to Leasowes Park, via a quick Sidetracked cache at Hagley station. We arrived to find it was a micro in a lot of ivy so we walked away as we just don’t get why you’d want to frisk a tree down to find a cache. I’m sure some people must love this kind of hide, but we don’t.

Beautiful hidden pond on the Size Matters series

Leasowes Park was as lovely as I remember it from our last caching trip here absolutely ages ago. The caches were a nice mix of unusual containers, sneaky hides, easy hides, great locations – you get the idea – perfect for some fun caching :-). On the way round we bumped into three lots of other cachers: The Cuthies and Max, piebean and The BazNess. Great to meet you all.

A green looking pool in Leasowes Park

Once we’d finished in the park, we returned to the Jeep in the car park and were going to treat ourselves to an ice-cream from the ice-cream van we saw when we arrived at the park but it was nowhere to be seen. What is it with us and ice-creams? We’ll get one eventually if it’s the last thing we do ;-).

Looking out from the higher park of the Leasowes walk towards the Clent Hills

What followed was a bit of a nightmare as we had something like 5 DNF’s on the run and were beginning to think it was time to go home and come back another day. A combination of missing caches, micros in woods without a hint, fields full of travellers right by GZ and our own incompetence did not help at all.

Leasowes Park View Point panorama

Just as we were about to go home, we managed to find a final few caches, including one at a really badly named road (I won’t say what here as it’s not family friendly) and one on the West Midlands County highest point (Turner Hill in Dudley).

Panorama looking out over Dudley and Wolverhampton from near the county high point

31 finds for today and some really great walking and caching. A shame about the hour or so of constant DNF’s later in the day but that happens sometimes.